Description and Statistics

About the Diocese

The Diocese of Santa Rosa was established on February 21, 1962. Drawn from portions of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the Diocese of Sacramento, the new diocese formed the northern counties of California into a new Church territory with its See in Santa Rosa.

Today, the Diocese Rosa includes an official Catholic population of 178,443 people in the counties of Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Lake, Humboldt, and Del Norte. As such, it is geographically large and very diverse, but demographically it remains the smallest of California's dioceses.

St. Eugene Cathedral was built in 1950 on the site of the Asistencia Santa Rosa de Lima (akin to a satellite of the Mision San Francisco de Solano in Sonoma), a small mission outpost established by the creek where a young Native American woman was baptized in 1828, on the feast of St. Rose. To mark that occasion Fr. Juan Amoros, OFM, a successor of Bl. Junípero Serra , declared the creek and its entire area would henceforth be known as Santa Rosa. And so it remains.

Territory

11,711 square miles comprising Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Napa and Sonoma counties in the State of California

History

Established as a diocese February 21, 1962, from portions of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the Diocese of Sacramento. Pastored in succession by five bishops: Leo T. Maher (1962-1969), Mark J. Hurley (1969-1986), John T. Steinbock (1987-1991), G. Patrick Ziemann (1992-1999), Daniel F. Walsh (2000-2011), and Robert F. Vasa (2011-Present).